April is National Poetry Month and since I do all of the youth writing programs at my library currently and have been hearing that our patrons want more children's writing programs, I wanted to do a poetry program.
I have always been passionate about writing and wanted to encourage young writers to write about anything their heart desires so I'm thankful I get the chance to teach and inspire future authors.
I kept monitoring my registration stats for this program since despite hearing comments that they want more writing programs, the attendance hasn't been exactly great for them. I think this is partly because for some, school hasn't made writing fun. Also, the older age kids are harder to pull into the library for programs. Some kids want these programs during the school year and some want these programs during the summer. Unfortunately, no one attended today's program.
I can save the lesson plan for another time, another April, but I'll be re-evaluating whether or not to have writing programs during the school year.
For our would-be poetry workshop, we were going to go over a variety of poems using examples and analyze their structure and meaning. I had prepared a short and sweet powerpoint on the poems I wanted to cover.
Next, I had plans to read a two-voice poem with help from the group and show a few more poetry examples to focus on how poems can have all different subject matters.
We were going to come up with our own concrete poem using a flower template shape (or other shape) and then come up with our own acrostic poem using any word we choose.
I also was going to let them know that we currently have a poetry contest going on at the library and encourage them to enter.
The types of poems we were going to go over were concrete, simile, metaphor, cinquain, haiku, onomatopoeia, acrostic, imagery, and two-voice.
Some of the poetry examples to be used were "My Family" by Stacy Zeiger, "The Rollercoaster" by Kelly Roper, "A Graduation Poem for Two" by Stephanie Klose, "Sick" by Shel Silverstein, "Bed in Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "There Was an Old Man with a Beard" by Edward Lear, and "A Bird, Came Down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson.
Good news is I have a ready-made poetry lesson.
The nice weather we have been having also played a role I'm sure, since it's pretty quiet in throughout the library.
For our last week of storytimes, we celebrated our favorite books and different cultures in honor of Children's Book Week. This was the first time we tried this theme and I really enjoyed it. It's a great opportunity to share our favorite picture books with our groups and introduce them to some cultural picture books.
I started off explaining our theme using the book Book Fiesta! by Pat Mora. This colorful book celebrates children and reading, showing all the ways a child can enjoy reading a book.
Since our theme is about loving to read, I used the flannel board story, A Boy and His Box. This is a story about a boy who loved to read in his box. All different animals stroll by and ask to come inside the box to hear the story. The group is introduced to different types of animals and a bee gets all the animals out of the cramped box. This always seems to be a hit with any group.
Our next story kept their interest throughout and is very fun and interactive. There's a Monster in Your Book by Tom Fletcher lets us do fun things with the monster in the book, like tickling him or turning the book to shake him out.
We practiced our colors and matching by matching some flannel kites and then it was time for our next book, I'll Wait, Mr. Panda by Steve Antony. What will Mr. Panda's surprise be and who will be willing to wait and see?
Our final book was Fiesta Babies by Carmen Tafolla, a short and rhyming cultural read.
For our craft, we made pinata horses using construction paper, tissue paper, and yarn for its tail.
Happy Children's Book Week, Dia de los ninos!
I am always surprised when I get to this theme that I'm not so wowed by the picture books on butterflies. Either the story is interesting, but too long for little ones to sit to, or they are lacking a good story to it if they are short. I do have my favorites for this theme, but I'm really looking for some new good ones to add to my list.
The books we read were Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert, Don't Worry Bear by Greg Foley, and Kitten's Big Adventure by Mie Araki. The group enjoyed counting the butterflies in Ehlert's book and liked how their was a kitten in Araki's book.
I told the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar using flannelboard pieces and they all helped me put the food pieces onto the board.
We also counted some colorful butterflies on the flannel board and went over each of their colors.
For our craft, we made butterflies out of paper plates. They all turned out very pretty, but we needed to staple some of the wings together because the paper plates wouldn't stick too well to the the construction paper.
Let's flutter into spring!
It has been such a busy week already that it feels like this Toddler Art class was done last week. We welcomed spring by reading and crafting all things rain.
We talked about rain for a little bit and then I read Red Rubber Boot Day by Mary Lyn Ray. This was just the right amount of length before the group got antsy.
I explained the two crafts and we got to painting some raindrops and rain puddles. It was good that the kids got to experience at least two types of ways to paint, with their hands/paint brushes and with pom poms attached to clothespins.
Our first craft was a rain boot puddle craft using blue paint and our fingers or paint brushes. Mostly everyone chose to use a combination of their hands and the brushes. The kids made a rain puddle with paint and then glued their rain boots on top.
Our second craft was an umbrella raindrop craft. We used the pom pom clothespins for dipping into blue paint and pressing them onto our paper to make raindrops. We tried not to have raindrops under our umbrella.
One of my regular, sweet families gave me some Easter candy and that made my day. I really enjoy seeing every family at the library enjoying their time together and growing together.
It just so happened that this week's storytime theme was rain and this always makes things easier when preparing for my individual programs that are independent from storytime because I can research books and crafts and pair them to what works with what program/age group best.
We started off storytime by following along to our opening bean bag song and then we read Puddle Jumpers by Anne Margaret Lewis. This book shows how fun rain can be and all the different ways we can jump in puddles.
For our first activity, I told the story of the Mushroom in the Rain using the flannelboard. I had enough pieces for each child to put up an animal on the board and we talked about how the mushroom was growing and getting bigger and bigger. This is always a fun story for the kids.
Our next picture book was Raindrops Fall All Around by Charles Ghigna. Ghigna's books always are paired with simple, but beautiful illustrations and we learn a lot about the basics of rain in this book.
I thought it was time for a movement activity, so we followed along to the song "Walter the Waltzing Worm" with each of our cutout worms. This works much like a bean bag song except we are putting Walter on our head, shoulder etc. instead of a bean bag.
Our last story of the day was Watersong by Tim McCanna. This is a fun story to read out loud because it's making all the noises rain can make, is short, and has a calming effect.
We colored umbrella-shaped coffee liners with markers and used a spray water bottle to bleed the colors together. Everyone seemed to have loved this craft, but of course some of the kids got a little too much "rain" on their umbrellas.
April showers bring May flowers...
Preschool Picasso was all about celebrating spring. To celebrate spring, we read rain books and did some rain crafts. It was a plus that it happened to be a rainy day.
We started off by discussing our rain theme a bit and then I read Mushroom in the Rain by Mirra Ginsburg. The group did a wonderful job listening and they were definitely in a storytime mood.
I made a few program announcements and then explained our two crafts for the day. Our first craft was making our own thunderstorm scene and it was a great opportunity for the group to experiment with foil painting, blending colors (we went over how black and white makes gray) and making their own decision on how their stormy sky should look. They also practiced their cutting by making their own grass out of light green strips of paper.
I think what makes this craft fun and unique is being able to paint on shiny foil.
The second craft gave them different textures to play with using pipe cleaners and cupcake liners. They used the clothespin/pom pom combination to dab blue pain to make their rain and the other supplies were used to make umbrellas.
A handful of kids asked if we could read another story and then more asked so I was able to read a total of four stories! I think reading the stories is the most important part of a youth library program, so I was happy to hear this request. I pulled the display books I had on rain and we read them. Rain on the Roof by Janine Scott and The Rain Came Down by David Shannon. We also read The Three Little Pigs, a book one of the kids brought from home.
I got a lot of nice comments from parents today on my reading style and craft choices. That made my day! Maybe rainy days aren't so bad after all!
This week's storytime theme was our concept theme for the session, so we read about the alphabet. Because of it being the last couple of days of spring break, turnout was lull but I was able to focus on helping one of my regulars learn more about his ABC's.
We participated in the bean bag song together and then we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. Talk about a classic alphabet book.
Next, it was time to break things up a bit by feeding Alpha-Alligator. There's a nice rhyme that goes along with this where alligator is fed his letter when it's called. These types of imaginary feeding activities is always a hit with the kids because they love to participate and help in storytime.
We read Charles Ghigna's book, The Alphabet Parade. This is a good book that goes over letters and animals.
My little audience was pooped out by this time so we cut storytime short and worked on our D is for Dinosaur craft. There were scissors out for cutting dino scales and crayons to color them in if cutting was too difficult.
I had a more elaborate storytime planned for a bigger group. Some additional books I was planning on reading were LMNO Pea-quel by Keith Baker, Alligator Alphabet by Stella Blackstone, and ABC I Like Me! by Nancy Carlson.
Some other activity ideas I had was using my A and B puzzle flannels where there are pictures of different things that start with the letters A and B and make the shape of the letter when you put them all together. I also had the idea to sing along to the Bingo song and the alphabet song. Can't go wrong with those classic songs.
Another craft option was printing out monster coloring pages and using foam letter stickers to put in his belly because he would be the Alphabet Monster of course.
There are a lot of possibilities for this theme and so, so many books on letters. Each individual letter could have their own storytime with what's all available.
Time to say our ABC's!
I found out about this book and the message of this book online and had to check it out. The words really tugged at my heartstrings! Every line is such a great message and is a perfect book for self-esteem and for a mom to give to her daughter. I loved this book!
Summary: Encourages readers to accept and love themselves as they are and advises them to be confident, curious, adaptable,and willing to speak up.
Age Range: 4-8 years
"Dear Girl, Keep that arm raised! You have smart things to say!"
If you know about the author's blog and her battle with
cancer, this will really bring out your emotions. More picture books
like this need to be written.
